WinClone 7 Volume to Volume Cloning Hangs

Trying to use WinClone to copy a BOOTCAMP partition from an external drive to the upgraded internal SSD (OWC 1TB Aura Pro) on a mid 2014 MacBook Pro Retina. I have created the partition and formatted it to FAT. When I start the Volume to Volume cloning it seems to hang at the Starting File Based Disk to Disk Clone stage. (i.e. no movement of the progress bar for many minutes). Have reboot, erased and tried again to no avail. Thanks.

It can take a while. I would recommend either switching to block-based imaging in the preferences or creating an image and then restoring to the external drive.

tim

Hi Tim,

After letting the process run for approx. 20 hours eventually it failed and unexpectedly reboot the laptop. So I erased the partition back to FAT, changed the preferences to block-based imaging and (as mentioned above) and restarted the process. That completed in approximately 2 hrs (for a 90GB Windows partition). Unfortunately, even though the partition is recognized during an option-reboot, the partition will not boot and just hangs and until I force a shutdown and restart the the machine back into OS X. What else do I need to do enable the Bootcamp partition to be recognized correctly? Thanks.

Clayton.

That process should have worked. You can try creating an image and then restoring the image to the new volume.

tim

Hello,

TL;DR Winclone is still not successfully migrating my Bootcamp partition.

Here is the process I have done so far:

  1. Reinstalled my original Mac SSD and used Winclone to create an image of my Bootcamp partition (as suggested above) on the SSD using the block-based imaging.

  2. Installed my already set up OWC SSD in my Mac Pro 13" Retina, boot to OSX

  3. Installed my original Mac SSD into an external housing to give me access to the original files (including the Bootcamp image created in step 1)

  4. Used Disk Utility to create a 240GB FAT partition on the OWC SSD (note the original Windows 10 Bootcamp partition was 100 GB with 90 used)

  5. Tried to restore the previously created image to the new Bootcamp partition using the default settings.

  6. After leaving the process run for 18 hours and reaching a completion of 75%, I abandoned the process. Also note that the laptop is completely unusable during this process and flashes the screen incessantly.

  7. Used Disk Utility to erase the (now NTFS) Bootcamp partition back to FAT

  8. Used WinClone set to the block-based imaging setting to restore the image on the external drive to the Bootcamp partition on the internal SSD.

  9. Process completes successfully in a reasonable amount of time (i.e. 90 minutes)

  10. Proceed to restart the Mac Pro with the Option key pressed to bring up the boot manager. No option to boot into Windows was present.

  11. Assumed some other issue is the problem, wrote you this email.

Okay, this is becoming frustrating. I though this would be straight-forward process. I am restoring the Bootcamp image to exactly the same machine into a partition with more space for Windows 10. I thought your Winclone product was designed exactly for this situation. If the Winclone process is supposed to be making the Bootcamp partition bootable, why is it not doing that or what else can be done to fix this? It seems like the transfer process is completing but the partition is not recognized as bootable.

Thank-you for your attention in this matter.

Sincerely,

Clayton Wozney

After you restore with block based imaging, does the volume mount in macOS and do you see the files?

tim

Thanks for getting back to me Tim. I have to swap the SSD’s around to check this now that I’ve reverted back to my original SSD for the time being. I should be able to run this test this weekend and let you know.

Clayton.

Thanks. Looking forward to the results.

tim

Hi Tim, thanks for your patience. When I reinstall the new SSD I can see the BOOTCAMP partition and I can see the files on it, so it seems to have copied over successfully. However, I cannot seem to boot from it and VMWare Fusion does not recognize the partition as a Bootcamp partition. I have a screen shot of Finder showing the partition and the files. Thanks for your help.

Clayton.

Can you explain a bit more about VM not recognizing it as a Boot Camp partition? I have had it not boot, but does VMWare not allow you to even select it?

tim

Hi Tim,

Thanks for your help. Unfortunately this has become a little too frustrating so I have rebuilt the Bootcamp partition from scratch and resinstalled my apps. Very disappointing, I was expecting that paying your company money for a piece of software specifically designed to prevent what I have been forced to do would have worked. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Let me know how I can apply for a refund.

Sincerely,

Clayton.

Sorry you had issues. You can get a refund here:

tim